Friday, November 11, 2016

Inspired largely by this post at Rotten Pulp, and by a nice big hangover binge on Calvino, I've prepared this handy table. Useful perhaps for when people ask scholars or oracles how the game world came to be a sublime ruin teetering toward the aesthetic of grotesque. Of course you might find it useful for other reasons as well - for example I'm keeping it open on my phone to help talk to relatives at Thanksgiving.

Sunday, November 6, 2016

and I’d call it one of those great free (or nearly so) products of the OSR that are made with heart and singular vision. The book itself is 64 pages, though much of that is made up of ominous prophetic statements in large fonts and lovely full page etchings from the common domain (I recognize a lot of Gustav Dore’s illustrations from Dante’s Divine Comedy) that really add to the setting feel. Actual, game ready content takes up far fewer pages, but that’s okay, because the Deathcrawl at its best is less of a module or adventure then setting for playing very grim survival based dungeon crawl. The adventure part of the books is actually its weakest, a set of scene based encounters that while unrelentingly bleak and open-ended provide a bare skeleton of an adventure that doesn’t quite live up to the promise of the setting. That promise though and the horrifically spare setting itself are wonderful and make up for the minor weaknesses of other areas.

One such minor issue is that Deathcrawl uses DCC as it’s basis, which makes for some rules kludge that needs to be converted for most, but this is minimal and Deathcrawl generally avoids the fidgety nature of the DCC system by eliminating all classes except fighters.

OMINOUS STATEMENTS AS SETTING“And yet the Cursed dig...because they have forgotten what it means to do anything but dig, fight and flee.”That’s typical of the somewhat lyrical, somewhat overwrought declarations that MacGeorge uses as the main setting vehicle. Even setting rules (all players begin as a level 1 warrior) are communicated in this way, and it makes for an effective enough system to communicate setting and feel. It’s rather evocative really, and allows justifies Deathcrawl’s interesting rules changes (Death occurs by burning up a character’s ‘hope’ - formerly Luck in the DCC rules and by the steady accumulation of terrible mutations). More than anything Blacksun DeathCrawl feels bleak and allegorical, a mystery play from some religion based on Black Metal Album covers rather than normal tabletop fantasy or the series of evocative vignettes that the module sets out to promote ‘moral’ play (in the sense that more of the play derives from making moral decisions, not that it forces players into having a specific moral stance). Yet I suspect it’s best played as a dungeon crawl where finding a way deeper to escape the Black Sun’s torturous light and unstoppable minions while discovering food and water are the only goals.

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

So D&D 5E is about to put out a new monster manual... Volo's Guide to Monsters it might be awful, and it might be really cool. It sounds like they are focusing more on unreliable narrators and ecology to tell a lot more detail about the monsters in the book, rather then just provide a cacophony of statistics. Now I fear Volo's Guide will not amuse me, though it is definitely taking cues from Patrick Stuart and Scrap Princesses "Fire on the velvet Horizon", but only because I don't think Elminster flavor text can be anything but dreadful.

Arthur Rackham
(because one needs better goblins)

Still there are things to be said about monster design, and I agree with Mike Merles and 5E when they want to focus on the intangibles of their monsters: their behaviors, ecology, hooks related to them and similar inspirational information for the GM - up to a point. Monsters are iconic and a central theme to table top fantasy, and doing them well goes a long way towards doing a game well. The issue is - what's really useful and necessary in a monster design, especially one published as a supplement. For this I think to the games I've played recently and what makes encounters in them good.

I'm been playing in Ben of "Marazin's Garden's" Dreamlands game a bit and I have noticed that one of the things I enjoy is that we've yet to encounter any monster from a book, at least as far as description and characterization goes. To me this is a mark of a good campaign and good world building.

Using unique monsters means among other things that the GM needs to describe them and that the players need to think about them as more then a reference to a Monster Manual. One of my major complaints about published modules, and even the 5E Monster Manual, is a lack of description for monsters, beyond dull formalities. There is a balance in designing pre-made monsters, somewhere between several pages of (likely dull with Elminster invoked) of genre fiction the Volo's Guide promises and the terse statistics based descriptions found in the Little Brown Books. I'm not sure where exactly it lies, certainly Fire on the Velvet Horizon is pretty lyrical in its monster descriptions, but its a fun read because its descriptions are full of evocative detail that gets a GM thinking about how to use the monsters described within - and of course anything done well is better then the best thing done badly.

Personally however I have little use for Monster Manuals, even good ones. For me, the aesthetics of monsters aren't hard to think up and design, and the most important element about an encounter is that it makes sense in the setting. I tend to run non-standard settings, and making monsters that fit those settings, tell stories about the setting and generally provide a point for player interaction, wonder and decision making is often far easier then fitting monsters from other sources into a non-standard setting.

Friday, September 30, 2016

My readers may think that I have absolutely no time for the tabletop products produced by Wizard's of the Coast and would rather laud "Maze of the Blue Medusa" and everything Hydra Co-op puts out, but this isn't entirely true. Let's face it OSR/DIY D&D types, WOTC has the best market penetration and is going to be far more widely read then any other tabletop product. I want these products to be good, I want people who plunk down $50 for a hardcover high production value (though frankly not up to the production value of the better LOTFP products and Maze of the Blue Medusa) book to think "D&D is awesome!" - they just haven't been in my experience. Until now(ish)!

A sad lady one meets early in the Curse of Strahdone of many decent, topical pieces of art

Yeah I'll say it Curse of Strahd is good. It has problems, some the typical Hickman problems of being campy and thinking it's more clever then it is (a problem that almost all OSR/DIY self published products - say "Maze of the Blue Medusa" and "Slumbering Ursine Dunes" arguably share in a different ways and degrees) and some typical WOTC problems of trying to cross market product and play to video-game sensibilities (that no OSR product - even the worst bit of Gygax emulating randomly generated from the 1st edition DMG cruft - shares). I may write a full review at some point, but really it doesn't have unforgivable problems and provides plenty of material for a GM (as well as good GMing advice - shockingly).

One thing Curse of Strahd suffers from, though at least they are trying - clearly they are trying - is mediocre treasure. I can't shake the suspicion that 5E doesn't see treasure as important and still relies heavily on the idea of character advancement through dynamic 'combat as sport' murder (of baddies, clearly only the murder of baddies) which I like to call "Judgmental Murderhoboism", but at least they are trying to make treasure interesting. One area where Curse of Strahd fails utterly, predictably and awfully is the repeated use of "Cheap Jewelry" - often found in wholesale lots and always worth 25GP as treasure. Now eliding the question of if 2.5 lbs, or say 2 for craftsmanship, using the classic D&D weight for GP, of gold can be considered 'cheap' (and one can't blame Curse of Strahd for this system and genre wide failure), I think this was a missed opportunity to add a lot of evocative setting detail to the adventure. It's funny too, because the module does provide numerous small random tables for an ongoing joke about macabre children's toys - clearly the wit and wisdom was there - but the two pages a good 'cheap jewelry' table would take were less important then a few more paragraphs of typically Hickman purple prose about the twisted narcissistic love of Strahd or some copy repeating the idea that the vampire lord is evil via more boxed text.

Barovians from Curse of Strahd - again pretty good art that is setting specific.

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Lately the HMS Apollyon is drawing me back in, I've started doing some doodles and here are a few.

This first is of the vessel from a birds eye view - not sure it captures scale well, but really there's nothing in the setting to measure it against so it'll have to do.

The second image I think does a better job of implying size, with a 50' yacht in the inset. The location of the yacht is a similar marina entrance to the one used in my last online game, which I really should post a play report for.

The final two images are of different eras of Steward armor. The first a steward in the molded garrison plate common when Sterntown still controlled a few heavy industrial factories and could roll and stamp heavy steel as well as mass produce rifles. It's based on the experimental 'light body armor' prepared for the US army in 1918 - alloy steel over a rubber backing (WW1 armor is fascinating, from the heavy German armor for machine gunners, to the British layered silk stuff. The US armor that the HMS Apollyon armor is based on was designed by the rather interesting eccentric and renaissance man Bashford Dean who was also a noted collector and expert on early modern and medieval armor. The second steward wears the standard armor of the Stewards (with rather garish parade helmet crest) from the period after "the retreat" which all of my games have taken place in. Hand forged banded armor modeled after the roman lorica segmentata. In game terms both are identical suits of AC 17 heavy armor. I have decided that "Adsmus Custodes Pacis" or "We Assume Guardianship/Custody of the Peace" is an appropriately ironic motto for the stewards (They also have a motto about helping people and such maybe the Latin version of "Your Leisure is my Pleasure" spoken by Spud in "Train Spotting", but I haven't really decided yet.)

Thursday, September 8, 2016

If animated corpses, ghouls, wights and wraiths make up the common undead, D&D has always had room for more dangerous abdead foes, and unlike ghouls wights and wraiths, these more powerful undead are not simply increasingly dangerous versions of the same creature. It's unclear exactly what purpose greater undead, as I've taken to calling spectres, mummies and vampires, serve in Monsters & Treasure, are they tougher versions of wraiths and wights to threaten higher level players, are they puzzle monsters designed to threaten mid level parties in small numbers or leaders of undead factions? Whatever the intent powerful undead are an important part of the higher level random encounter tables and each represents a significant threat to characters. Following the trend established with Lesser Undead, the danger from the more powerful creatures is largely the result of immunity to some attacks and the ability of their attacks to do permanent damage in the form of status effects.

Warhammer Fantasy has this wonderful way of breathing life into the cliche

MUMMIES: Mummies do not drain life energy as Wights and Wraiths do, but instead their touch causes a rotting disease which makes wounds take ten times the usual time for healing. A Cleric can reduce this to only twice as long with a Cure Disease spell if administered within an hour. Only magic weaponry will hit Mummies, and all hits and bonuses are at one-half value against them. Note, however, that Mummies are vulnerable to fire, including the ordinary kind of torch.

Mummies are strange creatures then, not much stronger then Wraiths, but more accurate and very slow (they have the same AC and 5+1 HD to a Wraith's 4), moving a a rate of '6', the same as zombies and skeletons. They have a seemingly less terrible special attacks then wraiths and wights, causing a disease rather than draining life force but they are invulnerable to regular weapons, not just missiles. It almost sounds like the Mummy is a stronger form of the animated corpse, the skeleton/zombie, rather then a quick, self-willed form of revenant like the ghoul, wight or wraith.

The most complex aspect of the mummy is it's special attack seems like a clumsy and confusing mechanic, especially in a system where a common convention is re-rolling HP at the start of each session. My own take on "Mummy Rot" is that the disease prevents magical healing and reduces HP total to 1/2 the rolled amount at the start of each session. I'd also add a permanent -1 to HP even if the rot is cured by cure disease spell, plus the rot is disgusting and makes the character smell bad. Obviously there's a lot of room for a far more horrible disease, something with statistics loss and progressive HP damage culminating in death. I'm not really sure if it's necessary as the consequences as written have a pretty nasty overall effect. The only plus side of death by Mummy as opposed to death by Wraith is that the victim of a Mummy will not rise as a Mummy.

Monday, September 5, 2016

Looking through an old folder I found some notes on the last few seven session of the ASE campaign that started this blog back in 2012. I've decided to maybe write a few up and see where it goes. This is the first, starting directly after this Play Report. I think this season was played late 2012 or something, before Huxley's player had a kid.

Back in their dingy apartment, covered in the tiny scabs of grunkie inflicted wounds, Huxley, Nell, Lemon, Grimgrim and Drusilla wake to another day, stunned and sore and for the first time cannot begin an immediate debauch, the last bottle of hooch purloined from the depths of the Old Brewery having been spilled down Lemon's sweaty torso the night before.

The booze brought back from their last adventure may be gone, but the desperation lingers. Nell's arm set in a crude cast, but clearly broken to the point where even Grimgrim's divinely aided ministrations won't quickly restore it to functionality. The band needs a rest, a long rest, preferably somewhere peaceful, but it seems doubtful that their enemies will allow them one. It's been a week since the raid on the Old Brewery's lower levels and each of the adventurers knows there will be a price to pay. It's not clear who will come to collect, the Unyielding Fist, drug running gangsters, the death cult of Furter, or even Drusilla's anthropophagic relatives - but a debt has come due and payment is going to be rough.

Thursday, August 25, 2016

It's perhaps long overdue, and really this document has been sitting about, mostly edited, mostly complete for some time now. I've finally decided to release it and hopefully others will find it useful. In addition to being the combat and exploration rules I've used extensively for my last campaign of HMS APPOLYON, it's a set of fairly well tested rules that I've used in modified form for other games.

I never set out to write a retro-clone, only
my own esoteric setting material, but HMS Apollyon has turned into a retro-clone
of sorts – specifically a sort of homage to the earliest editions of Dungeons and Dragons.I have a copy of the “Whitebox”, the later
“collectors’ edition” that I bought long ago in my youth, but I never really
read it with a critical eye until playing in Brendan S.’s Pahvelorn game on
Google+.Most of the basic rules and
mechanics here are pulled or interpreted from the “Whitebox” and the “Little
Brown Books” it contains, but they are more the product of other’s work and
games – Nick W., Ramanan S. and most of all Brendan S., as well as the players
who have stuck with the setting as it has contorted and evolved, especially
Chris H. and Eric B.

I have tried to keep my rules concise, but rather than just offer another set
of retro-clone rules I want to provide my reasoning for why I have adopted
them.You may notice small text boxes
below some of the rules, and in these I have tried to justify why I am using a
rule and what I hope to accomplish with it.It’s my belief that while setting is largely formed by evocative
description, NPC interaction and collaborative storytelling, that rules are still
important as they can destroy or support a setting’s tone.I shy away from too many player-facing
mechanics and try to emphasize “player skill” over “character skill” but
mechanics do help make a setting, especially combat mechanics which largely set
the game pace, character turnover (lethality) and how important central is to
the game.

The intent of the HMS Apollyon setting is to
provide players an exploration game in a setting where life is cheap, the world
cruel, and combat against the denizens of the haunted hull a desperate, not
altogether wise gamble. These combat rules are written with this goal in
mind.The rules were slowly developed
and modified through play and thus are esoteric as opposed to
systematized.While systematized rules
have an intuitive appeal, I have found that the effort to fit everything into a
structured rule set rather than a collection of smaller subsystems or
individual rules tends to stifle the sort of “rulings not rules” mindset that
early Dungeons and Dragons fosters as
well as discouraging the individualized house rules that are necessary to fill
gaps in any rule system in a comprehensible manner that doesn’t rely on
metagaming or “build science” more appropriate to war games.

Friday, April 1, 2016

The Fallen Empire is a
place where the lives of the citizenry are constant hostage to
contingency.No day goes by without
rapacious tax assessors turning a village into desolation ready for sale to
outside interests, a sink beast surging up and invading a nearby croft, or that
the simmering conflict between two ancient houses is finally settled in a
bacchanal of slaughter.The survivors of
these tragedies, insignificant to the callous and exhausted powers of the
world, find themselves without sustenance, support or succor in a time where
the oppression of time and the past means that even compassion has guttered
down to the barest coals.Some die. Most
suffer and then die.A few survive, and
the rarest prosper.

Those individuals that are able to withstand the buffets of ill fortune mostly
become treasure hunters, grave robbers, and mercenary agents.Guides, wildmen, spies, travelers,
chroniclers, prophets and reavers - adventures, starting from nothing these men
and women shift and bully the Empire’s somnolent powers, dusty mores and
resigned masses, carving themselves places of note.

Before riding a wave of blood, magic, fire and cunning to wealth and power all
adventurers were something else – usually something contemptible and
piteous.To start an adventurer on their
path to death or glory roll 3D6 once for each of the following stats: Strength,
Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution and Charisma.If the score is 5 or under the adventurer has
a -1 in that statistic, fifteen of over it’s a +1.Strength grants a bonus or penalty to melee
damage and to hit. Intelligence a +1 or -1 to initiative, Wisdom to Saving
Throws, Dexterity to Armor Class, Constitution to Hit Points on a per die
basis, and

Equipment in the PDF below is defined by the region and past of the adventurer, with
several potential tables to determine starting equipment and past for
adventurers in the regions around the Desolation of Zubrab – The Pyre Sea, The
Pyre Coast, Provence Maritime, and Green Hive Canton.

Sunday, March 6, 2016

Thinking about settings and the generic assumptions of fantasy games and
where I want to place "Fallen Empire", my current online game, within
those constraints made me realize I need more than just a vaguer sense, I need
some ‘rules’ or ‘truths’ about how the setting works at a high or conceptual
level. I visualize the setting as my version of 'vanilla' fantasy, a sprawling
world of jumbled faux-medieval, classical and renaissance bits where dragons
and unicorns exist (likely in a twisted form - but still there). In order
to make the setting consistent I want to create some core ideas, and I want
them to be interesting, ideally running against some of my least favorite
fantasy archetypes.

This is complicated by a couple of factors, first I abhor vanilla fantasy
settings, and second classic settings are already ably represented by numerous
products, many of them far, far slicker then anything I could ever
deliver. Consequently I want a setting that is high fantasy, but not
derived from Tolkien, Greyhawk and The film Excalibur. Even dispensing with the
obvious influences, high fantasy settings come with their own problems –
principally really high fantasy is sprawling, better suited for heroic games of
conflict between great forces with players acting to pursue world changing
adventure. The titanic conflict between forces of good and evil, order
and chaos don't really work well with the rule sets I like, which are at their
best providing when a game is about exploration and trickery and picaresque
adventure for personal gain. An open world is therefore essential, with room
for the players to scheme and explore but there is very little open world left in
many high fantasy settings. High fantasy games of great empires, kingdoms and
might wizards logically leave very little of the map to explore – there problems
aren’t on a human scale, they are epic: ancient evil awakening, barbarian
invasions from the realm of nightmare or conflicts between stately pantheons of
deities.OD&D doesn’t really support
that sort of game, and while running a version of Journey to the West about
reformed demons and pagan gods fighting back against the bureaucracy of heaven
and sometimes on behalf of an upstart populist religion has an appeal – it’s
not the game I want to run right now.

I find having high level setting truisms helpful keeping my setting and
adventure design focused, for creating expectations and building a sense of how
the game should works. One traditional way of doing this is to focus on a
monster manual for the setting - what are the common creatures
encountered? A world where goblins are on every random encounter table is
radically different than one where dragons are. An abundance of either
implies something about both the world and the goblins or dragons
involved. I want to do this for fallen empire - define its singular
monsters (I’ve been doing this in my Monster Archeology posts), but more I want
to create a few other ‘truths’ that define the setting. While it's likely
these setting constraints will grow and change in play, it seems useful to set
up specific guidelines for everything I produce for Fallen Empire so that it
has a distinct look and feel.

While a good chunk of that look and feel is purloined art from Roger Dean and other
70’s/80’s progressive rock album cover artists, I want that to be a bit more than
an aesthetic draped over a standard D&D game.